Many commercial polymers and brittle ceramics require toughening agents to be used as reliable structural materials to prevent catastrophic failures. Rubbery materials or small molecular weight molecules are often used as toughening agents to absorb energy while subject to applied loads by dissipating the concentrated stresses. Although these conventional toughening agents improve the toughness of the host matrix, e.g. the bulk material, the intrinsic mechanical properties such as modulus and strength drops due to lack of integrity of the toughening agents. Moreover, many conventional toughening agents significantly degrade thermal resistance of the bulk material, which further restricts use of those conventional agents to non-highly structured applications and non-elevated temperature environments.
Accordingly, an on-going need exists for methods for toughening materials with select agents that can overcome at least some of the trade-offs and deficiencies that exist in the art.